How Not to Talk to Strangers in Bars at Midnight
by tepid sponge bath
Summary: Wherein a young Sherlock Holmes has a discomfiting encounter with a smoke-pale, golden-eyed stranger who smiles like a knife and casts two shadows.


**Note**: Written as a sort-but-not-quite companion to _Nitrogen-Breathing Butterfly-Winged Balloon-Fish and Fog-Flavored Spiders_, which was a fill for this prompt on the Sherlock kink meme: _Mycroft or Lestrade meeting any of the Endless_.

**Disclaimer**: The characters of _Sherlock_ are not mine, nor is the story, nor are the characters from the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. I make no monetary profit from this. The same goes for Neil Gaiman's _Sandman_ and all characters thereof. Also, the title is ripped from another story of Mr. Gaiman's, _How to Talk to Girls at Parties,_ and I apologize for everything.

**How Not to Talk to Strangers in Bars at Midnight**

"Hello, stranger."

"Not interested." Sherlock Holmes, twenty-one (twenty-two in three minutes), alone, slightly inebriated and not more than that only because he's been having trouble with funds, doesn't even look at the person who slides onto the seat next to him. It doesn't take a genius - which, incidentally, he is - to guess what they have in mind, and he has no patience for that sort of thing.

"I think you might be." _Confident_, Sherlock thinks. There is a suggestion of summer peaches - the thought surprises him, he is never fanciful - about her (_him?_), even at this hour. Medium height. He can see the vivid red (_likes attention, actively seeks it out_) of the suit jacketout of the corner of his eye. He can't tell the person's sex.

"I'm not playing your _games,_" he snaps, all brittle impatience, annoyed that he is _missing something_ and acutely aware of the fact.

"Honey, you're all playing _my_ game."

Sherlock is unprepared for what he sees when he turns to tell whoever it is to piss off. He isn't impressed by physical beauty (it's just an accident of environment and genetics after all, just worm food in the end), but the person sitting next to him is over and above being simply breathtakingly lovely in a way that transcends race and age and even sex. He opens and closes his mouth dumbly, and takes refuge in a deep draft from his pint. There is very little else he can tell about her (_or is it a him?_), and it discomfits him that this is so.

He (_she?_) smiles, and Sherlock _knows_, even through the alcohol, that there is no way that the lighting in the pub could produce the dual shadow - one very black and sharp-edged like it could cut, and the other little more than a vague gray smudge at a right angle to the first – that he (_maybe she_) throws. "Though you play it a little differently from everyone else, Sherlock Holmes."

Sherlock blinks. He's played that trick too often himself to be taken in by it - there are at least seven ways she (_he? it?_) could have found out his name in this pub alone, never mind public records and the university - so he doesn't say anything, and the stranger rolls his eyes. They're an unlikely color, almost gold, and striking against a complexion like the smoke rising off a just-extinguished candle wick.

"You like my big sister," says whoever-it-is, taking a sip of his (_her?_) drink. The ice in the glass, Sherlock notes, is heart-shaped. "She fascinates you. I'm surprised you don't contribute."

"What?"

"Most people do, when they like her. Kiss the dead bodies as they go, little advance tributes to the goddess they'll all meet in the end. She's no goddess. None of us are." And the small (_devastating_) smile that plays on his (_her_) lips is smug, satisfied that _they_ are more than gods, who are, after all, only puffed-up ideas with a shelf-life and a lifespan dependent on how long they can hold people's imaginations. So much more than that. Essential. Eternal. Endless.

"I think I know you now," says Sherlock slowly, as realization dawns. "And I want nothing to do with you."

"Oh? I'm not just the carnal, sweetheart. All of you _want_ something, the fame, the glory, the hurt, the pleasure-pain, the thrill of the chase, the release from boredom, you name it, you lust after it, and I'm there. In every beat of your ever-needing heart."

If Sherlock had been in any doubt as to the identity and nature of his companion, he isn't any longer. It's not the words as much as the way they are said: like a close caress, intimate as if they were lying skin to skin, as if they could be, in a heartbeat, if he _desired_ it.

"I've been reliably informed that I don't have one." He looks at Desire - _looks _and not _stares, _certainly nothing that suggests _captivation, _which, he reflects later, might have been what made the Endless so angry - level and cool and unimpressed, and the beautiful face twists into a scowl, a sneer, a venomous mask of undistilled rage (_but still lovely_).

"You remind me of my brother, and I hate that. You even look something like him, you damn cold _virgin_." Fire flashes in its eyes, darker gold in irises the tawny amber of yellow wine, and it's dangerous, like a hard glint of light off the edge of a knife, and for the first time that night, Sherlock Holmes feels his blood rush, feels his pulse rise, yes, with desire, but it's too late to do anything about that. "You'll meet someone, pretty boy, And you'll fall. _Hard_."

The last word is snarled into Sherlock's ear, an intimate, poisonous promise, and suddenly no-one is sitting next to him but a very drunk transvestite in a red coat who has passed out on the bar. He does his best to appear unfazed (_hormones_, he reminds himself, _only chemicals_), and asks the barman for another drink. It is one past midnight, and he's twenty-two.


End file.
